Ah, for the days before liposuction. When it was still okay to have girls in high cut bikinis playing sax, and kissing monitor lizards on the edge of swimming pools, while dirty old men walk around in T-shirts.

The ’80s are definitely back, with ‘Surprise Hotel’, the latest clip from LA band Fool’s Gold.

The video is inspired, says US director Matthew Lessner, by “those innocent days of summer, just being proud and strong and free and soakin’ up the rays.” A perfect backdrop for the band’s unique blend of Moroccan beats, African jive and ’80s pop.

Director Lessner’s films have won awards at numerous film festivals worldwide, including Sundance, SXSW and Clermont-Ferrand. His work has been featured on Wholphin, Canal +, PBS, iTunes and MTV.

The clip will screen in Video From the Borough – six video artists from Brooklyn, NY who feature as part of the Anode arts events in Sydney and Melbourne until December 5.

Against the news that filming of the six-hr pay-TV series of Tim Winton’s iconic novel Cloudstreet will go ahead in Western Australia early next year after a period of uncertainty, my favourite Australian novelist and favourite Australian photographer – Tim Winton and Martin Mischkulnig – will present in the same room with the project Smalltown.

Shot on a very large format camera, Mischkulnig took some of this series before asking Tim Winton to write for it. He said yes, which inspired Mischkulnig to shoot the rest, all around Australia over a three-year period.

Mischkulnig’s quirky composition and humour illustrate here the breathless wonder with which Miles Franklin Award winning Winton adulates his landscape.

The cinematic nature of both the images and Winton’s work itself makes me more eager than ever to know what’s going on with the film adaptation of Dirt Music?

These are some fly-on-the-wall snaps of a first date between four 11-year-olds. A movie followed by Max Brenner. The boys sat on one side, the girls on the other. No kisses were stolen but the odd slurp of chocolate was.